Since the 1980's, the watchwords of this country's businesses have been “continuous improvement.” Continuous improvement of business processes is not possible without performance measures. Delivery service providers, such as the United States Postal Service™ (“USPS™”), strive for continuous improvement of its performance in handling of mail, thus requiring performance measures.
Systems are known to potentially measure the performance of its internal mail handling. Tracking and tracing systems, intended for limited use by customers and more advanced use by internal organization, are already in place and capable of tracking mail throughout the USPS™ mailing system. For example, bar codes, such as PLANET™ Codes, affixed to mail pieces provide unique identifiers of a given mail piece. In addition, an enhanced PLANET™ Code, known as a “4-STATE™” bar code may also be used. The 4-STATE™ may offer the capability of embedding twice as much information in the bar code as the current PLANET™ Code. As the uniquely identified mail piece travels through the service provider system, mail processing equipment and scanners may track the uniquely identified mail piece, utilizing its bar code, and upload this tracking information to a central system, such as an Electronic Post Office (“EPO”).
The Confirm Service is a USPS™ system designed to provide tracking and tracing information to postal customers and internal organizations. Some operations of the USPS™ have endeavored to create local systems to seed mail and track the mail with Confirm; however, such localized systems fail to provide a systematic, consistent, nationwide system for measuring performance and recommending improvements. Performance measures must be consistently applied across an organization in order to accurately measure performance and improvement. In addition, neither the local systems nor the Confirm system provide reporting capability to drill down into reports to determine causes of performance breakdowns.
The present invention is designed to address one or more of the above problems.